Fire8Crackers's Xanga

Monday, July 23, 2007

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 15:19:13 GMT

I let down a friend yesterday. Unintentionally of course but it felt pretty terrible. I cant even remember the last time I let someone down without having some sort of outside influence to blame. This time I was 100% at fault. Although I attempted to patch things up after, I can not, for a moment, shake this guilt ridden feeling. I'm surprised how much this is effecting me and still can not bring myself to listen to the voice mail he left the day before.

Friendships are fragil things. Even the strongest ones might break after repeated occurrences of wear and tear.

sigh...

Monday, July 09, 2007

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 20:10:52 GMT

Managing someone while getting paid the same as them and staying at the same rank as them is already trying enough as it is. On top of it all, the person is slow to pick up things, asks questions that have been asked and answered multiple times previously and generally does not understand that calling someone or walking into someone's cube every 20-30 minutes might not be the best way to do things. Maybe they need to start having some social behavior class requirements in engineering school.

Monday, June 25, 2007

Mon, 25 Jun 2007 16:17:23 GMT

Too good:

http://imagechan.com/img/img.php?id=3062

oh my god:

http://imagechan.com/img/img.php?id=3070

ummmm:

http://imagechan.com/img/img.php?id=3114

Friday, June 22, 2007

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 18:48:48 GMT

I'll continue my story below later.

Recently at work we've gotten some new hires and interns. I've got to say theres nothing like a fresh college grad to make you feel worn-out/embittered/old and I've only been doing this for less than 3 years. While I'm training them to become the best engineers they can be, it dawned on me that I really have changed a lot in terms of perspective/priorities/preferences ... (ermm ok another word starting with p... cant think of anymore) since my college days as I'm reminded of the times when I used to think and act the same way. I wish I had the same kind of enthusiasm and energy. Maybe I need to take that long vacation I skipped out on after graduation or maybe I just need to go join Dave to do some software... How does one go about becoming less jaded? If you know the answer please let me know. If you tell me to stop pretending that I'm 35, you might be right =)

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 20:34:05 GMT

I've recently been thinking about that question... that "If someone were to write a book about your life up till now, would you read it?" question. Most of the time, the above question would be used as a means to motivate someone to stop procrastinating and do something absolutely world shattering. Except with me, I think I would actually read a book about me... hehe totally egotistical and self absorbed one could say, but to be honest if I were to write a book about my life, I could think of a ton of interesting little anecdotes to put in there. Mind you, I avoided the accomplishments, achieved goals, things-I'm-proud-of portions... In which case, the question really should have been "If someone were to write a book about your life, would you study it and exemplify it?" to which I would answer a flat out no.

Getting back to the book though. The snapshots would probably be something like this:

Born in the most northern town of the most northern state in mainland china, not in a hospital but in a delivery wife's house.... I think. Apparently my father was more tired out after the whole ordeal than my mother was =).

I then spent the first three years of my life without my parents. Somehow I survived in - 40 degrees C winters, where the heating system in my grandparents place involved shoveling "things that can burn" into this furnace that is used for both cooking and heating the concrete of the bed. (The beds in northern china are made of concrete for this purpose)

Beijing for the next two years was interesting. I got to spend Saturdays and Sundays with mom and dad (where my fav activity was going to the Beijing zoo... like every single weekend). The rest of the week though was spent with these total strangers that would put me in a bed next to 40 other kids at night and make me eat strange things for lunch and dinner. I remember small fragments of events such as not liking the tomato and egg meals which eventually I got used to, falling asleep on the toilet because they were out of toilet paper and no one was around to take care of the kids at night... and of course crying for a year every Monday morning when my parents dropped me off.

Eventually I ended up back in the most northern town of the most northern state in China for another two years. I still think of those years as one of the highlights in my life. My cousins and I had nothing to play with other than marbles, chickens, cows and trees but I couldn’t have been happier. Our "bathroom" was normally the forest in front of my grandparent’s house and when it rained, I had to tie my shoes really really tight for fear of the suction from the mud dragging it off. In the winters you had to be very careful about which path you took to school because a wrong turn could mean falling into snow that was deeper than I was tall.

From there I flew to Geneva, Switzerland but that’s a whole different story for another day ...

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 19:45:53 GMT

Wow, its been so long since I've updated that xanga has changed the UI for updating =). I'm starting to think that waiting until I actually stumble across something meaningful to write about, then waiting till I find the time to formulate a coherent entry, come back to it in a day or two for additional thought/changes etc then finally making the post might not be the best way to keep a xanga up to date =p.

So from now on I plan to spam this place with mundane, retarded silliness for a change of pace. Lets see how long that lasts... you readers have been warned. unsubscribe now if you must =).

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Tue, 19 Sep 2006 19:58:53 GMT

This sunday I watched my very first professional sporting event. First home game of the season for SF 49ers. I guess I've always wondered why home court advantage had such a big impact on sports teams. I dont anymore. Amidst the deafening roar, I found myself cheering just as hard as everyone else in the sea of red. =)

Final score 20 (9ers) -13 (Rams) =D. Thanks Bulger for the fumble and Hicks for that whoopin 59 yard return. Smith and Bryant did the rest.

Pix coming soon.

Friday, September 08, 2006

Fri, 08 Sep 2006 18:03:50 GMT

Some like to be herded while others do not.

The first things one considers are of course those assuming, on-the-surface, at-a-glance indicators of behavioral patterns such as food choice, daily activities, pastimes. We generalize certain categories of things with what we determine to be appropriate assumptions such as pizza equals high school, beer equals college, sit down restaurants with fancy décor equals adulthood. We conveniently load up our box of shame with parties, games and pop culture, stashing it away in some dark corner after tagging it with “forbidden past times”, all the while displaying supposedly more mature and urbane alternatives such as the ballet or the symphony as if they were some hard earned, well deserved trophy. Fiction to non-fiction, movies to musicals, sneakers to heels, sandwiches to shrimp scampi ffettuccine. We love to show the world that we’ve finally graduated and grown up. Surely I exaggerate; there are plenty of those that actually enjoy musicals, and eating seafood over ham and cheese, but stop!

How many times have we negatively judged someone for having made the “less refined”, “less interesting”, “less chic” choice? Deeming them as inferior in taste, culture, maturity because surely it’s a waste of life to indulge and give in to our most personal desires.

How many times have you been asked the question: “So what did you do this weekend?” and been embarrassed to respond with “Oh I sat home, watched dvds, played some computer games, ordered takeout. It was fabulous.” Feeling guilty we might tag some lame excuse at the end of it all like “yeah, I wasn’t feeling too well” or “I’ve been spending too much money going out lately”.

Obviously we didn’t always feel this way. At what point did we start to feel the need for justification? At what point did we feel the right to become condescending and presumptuous about those who just want to enjoy their personal time doing the things they actually enjoy instead of what “Luxury Living” magazine force fed them. So excuse me while I enjoy my 4.99 wonton noodle soup while sorting through my netflix queue. I’m most graciously leaving what are obviously life’s highlights all to you.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Wed, 09 Aug 2006 20:30:56 GMT

Rootless.

For a very very long time now I have tried with futility to express a certain sentiment about my life, my up bringing and the shaping of who am I. Futile because of my limited ability to effectively express my own feelings and emotions. Futile because these feelings were so plagued by obscurity to begin with that at the very thought of verbalization, they dissolve as abruptly and surely as one's dream upon awakening, leaving nothing but the hint of emotion gone by.

Then it just so happened that one day I stumbled on this below article while surfing around and after reading it several times realized it had at least partially captured what I had tried so hard to create on my own. So here it is, I shamelessly paste it on my own xanga for your viewing pleasure.

-----------------------------

We Are The Rootless Ones

Dépayser: v. tr. (1) Mettre mal à l’aise par changement de décor, de milieu, d’habitudes. V. Dérouter, désorienter. Se sentir dépaysé. V. Perdu.

Each year the International School of Geneva sends forth its graduates like the Larousse trade mark, fortified (no doubt) by the wit and wisdom of the speakers at the graduation ceremony; each year its graduates travel hopefully back home to the land of their parents and perhaps of their birth in order to start university or college or to seek employment. At least that was what they thought. For many, however, travelling hopefully was definitely better than arriving, and some find that after they have arrived it is hard to be hopeful when travelling anywhere.

This represents a failure for which the International School is not directly responsible but of which it ought to be aware.

The trouble is that when many Ecolint students who have been in Geneva for at least (say) 4 years get back “home”, they find that contrary to all expectation it does not feel like home at all. The symptoms of this malady are various. The climate feels different. The buses are different. The social structure is different. The Ecolint student may find the inhabitants a little parochial, perhaps, even a little dull. He is complimented on his command of English and is asked whether he used to ski to school. He is referred to as “that Swiss guy”. He does not know quite how the public telephones work. He does not know what beer to order. In short, he does not belong.

To be sure, a lot of these things will disappear or become unimportant. But they are all things that you expect may happen when you travel to a foreign country, and because they are expected then, they do not come as a shock. It is perfectly normal to feel foreign in a foreign country. What is not normal is to feel foreign in your own country. This is the essential feature of the conflict: you do not feel that you belong there, but you feel that you ought to do so. In addition, you are treated, with great politeness, in ways which are calculated to heighten this feeling of not belonging. The Ecolint graduate has been a stranger in a strange land for much of his life, and he knows how being a foreigner works. What he is not used to is being a stranger in his own land. It has been said that the Ecolint graduate is at home everywhere, but it would be more accurate to say that he is not quite at home anywhere.

For some, this culture shock is not a serious problem at all, and will last only a short time. For many it is enough to be unsettling. For some it leads to confusion and unhappiness, and who knows how long it may last? It is not a minor problem. It is a very considerable problem experienced to different extents by a large number of Ecolint leavers. What makes it more insidious is that it is a problem which does not even begin to exist until the student is gone from Ecolint and from Geneva, but the seeds of its existence are planted and can only be planted while the student is still there.

Of course there will be a process of adaptation to a new set of circumstances and this process may be wholly successful. But for those who are not wholly successful, the term “culture shock” is not really an adequate one in the context, for in addition to being an intellectual problem, this is also an emotional one and cannot simply be willed away. It goes to the root of a basic need of all human beings: a sense of security. To be sure, this security may be derived from other sources (family, friends, or religion, for example) but if it is made more difficult for an individual to belong to some place, he must seek some other thing as a surrogate, and this other thing may not be easy to find.

The causes of this phenomenon are not easy to find either. However, it seems that it occurs mainly among students who have remained at Ecolint and in Geneva for an appreciable length of time, and it appears not to occur to the same extent if at all among the parents of those students. What is the difference? The difference is this: students who have remained at Ecolint for a long time have spent an appreciable part of their formative years in the sort of society that Ecolint involves, and have put down roots in that society. They will have experienced many important and fundamental things for the first time in the context of that society: they have, to a certain extent, been imprinted with the marks of that society. The society in question is like no other on earth. The expatriate community in Geneva consists of a series of villages in a wider environment which consists on the material level of the physical manifestations of Geneva (the human environment of Geneva seems not to seep through much), and on the human level almost exclusively of the International School itself. Friends and acquaintances are derived almost exclusively from school. The neighbours and the wider family are remote. It is therefore an introspective community, all of whose members are sharing the same experience. In addition, the society has the advantage of being set in an attractive (some might say beautiful) city in an attractive (some might say beautiful) country. It is no wonder that the combination is addictive, but the addiction becomes apparent only after the drug has been withdrawn, and the withdrawal symptoms are not pleasant—and those who have not tasted the drug do not understand the after-effects.

What is difficult for parents to understand is that it is not the same for their children as it is for them. It is true that both parents and their children are part of a similar society. The same pressures are exerted on parents as are exerted on their children. But parents do not succumb to these pressures to the same extent. It is suggested that the reason for this is that the parents have already completed the process of maturing before they are subjected to these pressures, and have usually done so in a quite different environment. They already have their roots, and those roots are not in Geneva. They already belong to the home environment, and a posting to Geneva is a temporary albeit possibly long interlude. Their children, on the other hand, do not yet belong anywhere, but are of an age where they will begin to belong to whatever environment they are in at the moment.

The result of this added emotional buffeting may not show. It may show in uneasiness. It may show in a performance in college that was not as good as hoped. It is not for nothing that so many students return to visit Ecolint after they have left. It is not for nothing that some turn into wanderers. It is not for nothing that some return to live in Geneva. It is not for nothing that some adopt Swiss nationality. And it is not for nothing that some come to regard their passport as an accident of the laws relating to nationality and their homeland as merely a place for which no visa is required.

It may be argued that such a result is not undesirable. I do not subscribe to this view. The International School teaches tolerance and understanding but there is nothing in its ideals or teaching which requires its students to become emotionally stateless; there is also, unfortunately, nothing in its teaching which shows them how to avoid this. But it would be as well for the International School, for the parents of its students, and for its students themselves, to be aware of the problem, even though no one may know the answer.

R. J. Dormer
LGB 1959 1969

Monday, August 07, 2006

Mon, 07 Aug 2006 20:21:43 GMT

I think I have Xanga block... for now go here --> www.notpron.com